Hugh Bancroft

Hugh Bancroft (September 13, 1879 – October 17, 1933) was an American publisher and attorney who was the president of the Dow Jones & Company from 1928 to 1933.

Early life

Bancroft was born in Cambridge, Massachusetts on September 13, 1879, to Mary (Shaw) and William Bancroft. He graduated from Harvard College at the age of 17 and earned a masters of arts degree in civil engineering from the Lawrence Scientific School the following year.

Military service In 1894, despite being underage, Bancroft joined the Massachusetts Volunteer Militia. In 1897 he was moved to the officer ranks and made a captain and engineer on the staff of his father, who commanded the 2nd Brigade. He was forced to retire from the militia a year later due to typhoid fever. He was brevetted major general by Guild.

Legal career Bancroft was admitted to the bar in 1901 and formed a firm with Frederick W. Dallinger and Arthur P. Stone. They were later joined by Harry Stearns and Frederick W. Fosdick. Bancroft left the firm in 1905 and it dissolved three years later. After the firm closed, Bancroft went into partnership with Fosdick, while Dallinger and Stearns started their own firm and Stone went into solo practice. Bancroft handled cases for the Boston Elevated Railway and the Cambridge Gaslight Company. He resigned from the DA's office in 1906 to focus on his private practice and his duties as judge advocate general. In 1907, district attorney George A. Sanderson was made an associate justice of the Massachusetts Superior Court and Guild appointed Bancroft to succeed him. As DA, in October 1907, Bancroft declined to pursue manslaughter charges against the architect and contractor involved in the Amsden Building collapse of June 1906 in Framingham. Bancroft did not seek a full term in office. Bancroft found that the hair of all of the deceaseds' mattresses had been washed in arsenic and convinced John J. Higgins to drop the case.

Boston Dock Board In 1911, Governor Eugene Foss appointed Bancroft chairman of the board of directors of the Port of Boston, which would oversee the $9 million development of the port. Bancroft received a $15,000-a-year salary as chairman, which made him the second-highest paid state or federal government official in the United States behind only the Governor of New York. Under Bancroft's leadership, the state-of-the art Commonwealth Piers 5 and 6 were built and construction began on a new drydock facility that was to be the largest in the world. He left the board when his term ended on July 1, 1914.

Personal life On June 25, 1902, Bancroft married Mary Agnes Cogan, daughter of former Cambridge, Massachusetts alderman Joseph Cogan. Mary Bancroft died of an air embolism on October 29, 1903, shortly after giving birth to her daughter, Mary Bancroft.

On January 15, 1907, Bancroft married Jane Wallis Waldron Barron, stepdaughter of Clarence W. Barron. They had three children; Jessie Bancroft Cox, Hugh Bancroft Jr., and Jane Bancroft Cook. In 1912, Barron succeeded Charles Otis as president of Dow Jones & Company and Bancroft became the company's secretary. In 1921, Bancroft was a driving force in the creation of Barron's. Upon Barron's death in 1928, control of his businesses passed to Bancroft, who created the Financial Press Companies of America to organize all of Barron's businesses under a single holding company. He retired as publisher in 1931 but remained president of the Financial Press Companies of America and all of its subsidiaries. On October 19, 1933, associate medical examiner George V. Higgins revealed that Bancroft had died from suicide caused by "asphyxiation by coal gas with a question of cyanide fumes". Bancroft had gone to a blacksmith shop on his estate, closed and stuffed the doors and windows, started a fire in the forge, and died from the resulting fumes. Bancroft had reportedly been despondent about his poor health. Control of Dow Jones & Company remained in the Bancroft family until 2007, when it was sold to Rupert Murdoch's NewsCorp.